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Flannery O Connor's The Know-It-All Generation

501 Words3 Pages

In the story “The Know-it-all Generation” the author sets the scene in the first person and gives a personal account to prove an underlying issue that the generation may be facing. The generation consists of individuals that ultimately go off into the world with a sense of entitlement, false hope, and a pompous attitude due to constant specious comments made by those around. Meaningless compliments have become requirements for teachers, coaches, parents, and even peers. Being wrong is not an option in this generation. The main two points that the author states throughout the paper are 1.) that adolescents and people of this time have been brainwashed and conditioned to believe that they are better than they actually are and 2.) many times they do not understand that they are not perfect and criticism is a part of life. In a sense, many kids have been brought up in homes where praise is merely an everyday morning routine. From the time they are born, children are being taught that they are “winners” no matter what. They are being praised for the simplest accomplishments and being rewarded for things they should already do. If a parent is the first person to make an impression on the child, and their impressions are misguided and unrealistic this could be detrimental to the way kids see the world. They now believe that …show more content…

By using personal accounts the reader is now able to see how prevalent these actions are, and able to relate them back to his or her own life. The author speaks to those people who have an issue with criticism and reality. The statement “We’re programmed to devour compliments, and our gears break down when we encounter a new type of software: criticism” develops the second main idea of the paper. The generation does not favor criticism in any form. Even constructive criticism has been turned into a compliment

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